All these weeks he had kept himself in
hand; but to do so had cost him more than he liked to reflect on. The
only witness of his struggles was his old Scotch terrier, whose dreams
he had disturbed night after night, tramping up and down the long
back-to-front sitting-room of his little house. She knew--must
know--what he was feeling. If she wanted his love, she had but to raise
her finger; and she had not raised it. When he touched her, when her
dress disengaged its perfume or his eyes traced the slow, soft movement
of her breathing, his head would go round, and to keep calm and friendly
had been torture.
While he could see her almost every day, this control had been just
possible; but now that he was about to lose her--for weeks--his heart
felt sick within him. He had been hard put to it before the world. A
man passionately in love craves solitude, in which to alternate between
fierce exercise and that trance-like stillness when a lover simply aches
or is busy conjuring her face up out of darkness or the sunlight. He had
managed to do his work, had been grateful for having it to do; but to
his friends he had not given attention enough to prevent them saying:
"What's up with old Bryan?" Always rather elusive in his movements,
he was now too elusive altogether for those who had been accustomed
to lunch, dine, dance, and sport with him. And yet he shunned his own
company--going wherever strange faces, life, anything distracted him a
little, without demanding real attention.
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